Educated at the universities in Edinburgh, Kharkov, and Moscow (M.D., 1921), he practiced medicine in Palestine and then studied psychology in Zürich and (from 1933) Vienna. After examining legends of the ancient Jews and other eastern Mediterranean peoples, he concluded that some tales described actual occurrences and were not mere myths or allegories. In the United States from 1939, he expanded the geographic scope of his study of ancient documents. In his first book, Worlds in Collision (1950), he hypothesized that in historical times an electromagnetic derangement of the solar system caused Venus and Mars to approach the Earth closely, disturbing its rotation, axis inclination, and magnetic field. His later works are Ages in Chaos (1952), revising the chronology of the pre-Christian Middle East; Earth in Upheaval (1955), adducing geologic and paleontological evidence supporting his belief that catastrophes have overwhelmed the Earth; Oedipus and Akhnaton (1960), linking Egyptian history with Greek mythology; and Peoples of the Sea (1977), identifying Ramses III with Nectanebo, pharaohs otherwise dated 800 years apart.

The animosity of the American scientific community toward Worlds in Collision caused the original publisher, threatened with a boycott of its scientific-textbook division, to turn Velikovsky’s work over to a firm not involved in textbook publishing.